The G+T team – renamed Glee+T – belted out a musical version of “the banking industry versus the Senate inquisition", according to a firm email announcing the victory, with “a happy, gala, glitter cannon ending".

The Glee+T team was too good for Mallies’ 60 Floors Up, a band featuring partners David Friedlander, Ken Astridge and Tim Bednall. Mallies met the glam rock theme with The Who’s Pinball Wizard rewritten as Westpac Wizard and The Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz done as Banker Blitz.

Allens’ Rebecca Morrow and Isabel Cropley teamed up with Westpac staff to belt out versions of David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel and Joan Jett’s I Love Rock’n’Roll. The Allens band said in a statement they “went to great lengths to bring home the coveted trophy but mullets, leather, fishnets and a rock ’n’ roll attitude weren’t enough to clinch the crown".

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Perhaps it is a good thing the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General is due for a name change, because last week’s shoddy attendance at its first meeting for the year showed interest in SCAG is seriously waning.

The meeting in New Zealand was to involve federal, state and territory attorneys and the NZ Minister of Justice, who chaired it. But aside from the chair, only federal A-G
Robert McClelland
, Northern Territory’s
Delia Lawrie
and Victoria’s
Robert Clark
bothered to turn up. The ACT’s
Simon Corbell
, South Australia’s
John Rau
, Tasmania’s
David Bartlett
and WA’s
Christian Porter
sent a substitute, while Queensland’s
Paul Lucas
phoned in. NSW A-G
John Hatzistergos
also sent a sub, understandable as NSW is in caretaker mode and “Hatman" is very likely to get swept from office when voters unclog NSW Labor from the sinkhole of state politics.

Ministers agreed to strip one contentious issue – the establishment of a judicial complaints-handling mechanism – from the SCAG agenda, saying it was something that could be better handled by individual jurisdictions.

This decision flies in the face of several recommendations made by a Senate committee in December 2009, chief among them that a federal judicial commission be set up, based on the Judicial Commission of NSW, to hear complaints about judges and achieve consistency on judicial education and sentencing.

The federal government was to set up the commission by July this year, the Senate said. Until last week, SCAG was considering a harmonised way to deal with complaints about federal judges with the view of one national system being adopted later.

At a Senate estimates hearing last month, federal A-G’s Department secretary
Roger Wilkins
was asked what progress had been made in implementing the commission.

He said McClelland “has been seeking to get agreement from the states and territories on a national approach to judicial complaints handling" and more talks were expected at SCAG. “I think if we do not get some movement shortly on a national basis then we will go it alone at the commonwealth level," Wilkins said.

The matters are travelling together in the NSW Supreme Court and on Monday the Styles camp sought costs for alleged non-compliance with an order made in February for the parties’ barristers to attempt to resolve differences about discovery categories in the defamation case.

Clutz blamed Styles’s “on-the-spot" application for the Federal and Supreme cases to be amalgamated. “Events overtook," Clutz argued, offering to run a categories argument that day if judge William Nicholas had time.

“I think you’re missing the point," came the judge’s response.

Things were looking promising for Styles until Nicholas decided not to make a costs order yet. Instead he gave the parties liberty to apply to the court “to crack the whip" if things weren’t progressing.